


and open my heart in your hands

by jessicamiriamdrew



Category: Constantine (TV)
Genre: Blasphemy, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 04:41:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17400215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicamiriamdrew/pseuds/jessicamiriamdrew
Summary: “We should sleep,” John says, turning off the light and disappearing into the darkness, something that always creeps in with them.They never do this in their own beds. Familiarity would make this real, and motel rooms are liminal enough to keep that disparate.The demons they chase can’t follow them here.





	and open my heart in your hands

**Author's Note:**

> nebulously post tv show canon. some blasphemous imagery, that is linked to the explicit rating

He can’t keep his eyes open, can’t look at John, not when John is saying his name. Chas wants to—he wants to memorize every sound and second and scorching piece of skin—but he feels like Heisenberg trying to determine the position of an electron.

If Chas wants John to come back to him, he can’t try to observe him now.

John doesn’t seem to mind anyway that Chas isn’t looking at him, too busy chasing the orgasm Chas feels is only beats away. Chas is doing his best to get him off, trying to keep a pace even as John rides him.

He does open his eyes, and sees John looking down at him. 

On any other man that look might be vulnerable. Chas isn’t magical, which means John is immune to him. It’s enough to make Chas try to fuck John harder so that John will remember this.

The extra souls inside him burn, and he spares a blasphemous thought that sex was never this good before.

But that’s probably not true either, when the source of those souls is John, and all the orgasms since have been because of Chas thinking about John, no matter how loudly or often he lied about that fact.

John’s nails are digging into his thighs as his broken off moans increase. Chas wants to kiss him, to try to make John understand that he’s burning too. John’s hand closes over Chas’, picking up speed where Chas has faltered, and he’d be insulted if John wasn’t already coming.

It’s too good with John, his way of making Chas feel that he’s the only one that has ever mattered, even though that’s something only a fool would believe.

Coming makes John slump for a moment and Chas tries to be still and polite although he’s on a hair’s breadth edge. John smiles at him, lascivious, and Chas closes his eyes when John starts to ride him again.

His orgasm tears through him, a whirlwind of sparks and sputters in his brain, and John doesn’t stop moving until Chas is coming back down.

John carefully extricates himself, taking and tying off the condom once he does, and even as Chas is spent he still thinks about fucking him again. That’s the effect John manages.

He’s too amped to sleep, despite the hour, a heinous one that he witnesses all too often, albeit generally in far worse circumstances. 

John cleans them both up with a damp towel; he’s always softer after sex, even if it is only temporary. Chas accepts the kiss to the forehead, ignoring the jackhammering uncertainty of his heart.

“We should sleep,” John says, turning off the light and disappearing into the darkness, something that always creeps in with them.

They never fuck in their own beds. Familiarity would make this real, and motel rooms are liminal enough to keep that disparate. 

The demons they chase can’t follow them here.

-

Morning light pours through the shitty motel curtains. Christ, he hates this part of the country. The mountains can never let well enough be and he and Chas have to show up and prevent another town from being done in by the idiocy of demon based sacrifice.

John blames their influence for last night, for his continued inability to stay away from Chas.

He’s not unaware of how Chas barely looks at him when they fuck. John doesn’t want to know who Chas is thinking about in the thrall of the moment if it isn’t the two of them. 

It could be someone else. Maybe it’s Renee that Chas imagines when the lights are off and the warm body beside him turns shapeless in the inky black.

John slides out of bed, practiced enough at leaving while others sleep to be able to do so without waking Chas. 

He smokes a cigarette in the bathroom. This motel is too shitty to care about smoking in rooms, but he tries to hide it from Chas anyway, a small unsure part of him worried a cigarette will turn into a final straw.

The shower water is scalding hot before John enters under its spray. The flames of hell are hotter; this is barely a drop in comparison. If his damnation can’t make him avoid thinking of Chas, nothing will. 

Besides, showers are his favorite place to catalog his wards of protection. It’s hard to tell what’s been damaged in the grime of exorcising, but water and soap clean it all away. The Hebrew letters on his side are beginning to fade, and the thrum of magic when he touches them is a fizzle where it used to be an inferno. He’ll have to get someone to repair those—preferably someone who speaks the language this time. The others seem to be holding steady, levels of magic normal.

The knock on the bathroom door is more courtesy than necessity. John waits a beat for the sink to turn on, Chas brushing his teeth. Instead it’s the shower curtain that pulls back as Chas steps in. The metal rings of the shower curtain cling on the metal bar, and all thoughts of self preservation leave his head.

There’s an arm around his waist, dragging him in tighter, that’s soothing on his skin in the water. Chas touches him so softly, fingers tracing tattoos, that John thinks he could live under his rule for good. Maybe there’s a universe where John gives instead of takes, and the lines on Chas’ face are from love.

“I was thinking donuts,” Chas says. “And coffee not from a motel room pot.”

John turns in Chas’ grip and lets his eyes close momentarily when Chas pushes his wet hair up his forehead.

“Big spender,” John says. “Did you work up an appetite?” 

He’s not disappointed when Chas’ hand migrates to his ass even if it wasn’t an intentional come on.

They should wash up, get coffee, and hit the road. 

They shouldn’t do this, just like every other time John has ignored the mounting fear that Chas is too close this time, that this will really be the end.

John kisses Chas anyway, reaching up to get him in better proximity. They don’t stop kissing as their hands wander. Maybe John should turn off the water, yank him back to the bed, and pull Chas on top of him until they’re too exhausted to leave.

He’s too old to be getting on his knees in motel tubs but he wants Chas’ hands in his hair more. There’s an ancient power in play with Chas’ cock and the holy work of John’s mouth.

John could make a variety of crude jokes about Chas splitting him open: the truth is that he doesn’t have the focus for them. Not with lukewarm water on his skin, the burgeoning ache in his jaw, and the twitch of Chas’ muscles. It’s the only holy communion he recognizes when Chas comes in his mouth.

The shower water washes away what John can’t manage to swallow. Chas helps him stand after a moment, moving his hands out of John’s hair to do so. That should be it: John should beg off reciprocity, but that would arouse suspicions, and this isn’t the place for that kind of arousal. 

Chas gets him off slowly, seemingly determined to return the effort of the blowjob with this hand job. John is weak, back against the wall, able to do little that isn’t make noises that cause Chas to smile. The peak of orgasm feels so far when Chas has full control. 

There’s still only so much Chas can do about how much John wants him, and the slowness of the orgasm in no way makes it softer. He’s grateful now for the cool wall against his back as Chas kisses him and keeps him upright.

They wash up with water leaning to cold. 

John is susceptible to whatever Chas might toss at him like this, warmed by his presence and sated by these rituals they don’t discuss.

-

Chas tosses their light load of suitcases into the back of the cab and chances a glance at John in the passenger side. Sunglasses on, looking asleep to anyone who doesn’t know him.

“Pretending to be vulnerable gives you a stronger hand, mate,” he’d told Chas years ago.

He wonders if John still believes that. It’s a convenient front against showing off any weaknesses. Chas has always thought it lends itself more to protection for things John won’t name.

He wonders what hellish things John sees even with his eyes closed. 

Chas slams the trunk and then slides into the driver’s seat. John doesn’t say anything, but he swears there’s a begrudging quality to the way John clicks his seatbelt. Unless pausing to buckle a seatbelt would cause their imminent death caused by whatever is chasing them, they wear seatbelts. He hates the idea of losing a soul to an ordinary wreck, and years of taxi driving have made buckling his own a reflex.

They drive along the highway, tinny jazz music fading in and out as radio towers disappear from vicinity. He should’ve made a pot of grimy motel coffee, but pulling off the road for a Dunkin’ Donuts drive through gives him the sensation of a normal life. That he and John are...defined as something, and John is surly after a roadtrip to go hiking.

John says “m’usual, please, love,” when they pull up to the speaker. Chas’ heart pauses a moment anyway, despite knowing it’s his common turn of phrase.

This is where someone who thinks they know John Constantine would order him a blacker than black coffee. 

Chas does know John, and so Chas orders himself a five shot latte and John an iced mocha. He asks for an assorted dozen donuts, too tired to calculate value and nutrition. 

Chas waves off his change and carefully situates the coffees in the cupholders before taking the box of donuts. That, at least, prompts John to take his feet off the dash and sit normally, smoothly grabbing the box to place it in his lap.

The highway is spinning past them again before John opens the box, handing him an apple fritter. He hates that this feels domestic, himself tearing apart the fritter while John does the same to his donut. The latte is bitter with five shots because Chas was up too late, too tense to relax, even though it was a night he and John fucked. 

Especially because they fucked.

He settles into his mental zone, cataloging road markers and mileage, part of him listening to John gulp down his own coffee, straw scraping the bottom.

Chas wants to put his hand on John’s thigh. Having John so close always feels like they’re hurtling towards disaster. He’s not sure what he has left in his life to wreck but he’ll gladly crash on those shoals. 

He worries, sometimes, that he’ll be alone looking for the mill house and unable to find it. That John will lock him out magically, in addition to the nigh impenetrable walls of his heart.

John is with him today, and so he knows the mill house will appear to let them in. To this home they’ve made, even if John disappears once they’re inside.

Maybe it’s that gnawing uncertainty that makes him open his mouth when he could’ve waited.

“I’m headed to Brooklyn this weekend,” Chas says. It’s always a delicate subject for the both of them.

John shrugs his shoulders. “Don’t need my permission, mate.” 

“I wasn’t…” Chas trails off, unsure with his words. He wasn’t asking permission, not in the way John is insinuating.

“Give Renee all my best, would you?”

It’s the tone of John’s voice that hits him hardest. That’s John closing himself off firmly, like John hadn’t fallen asleep beside him last night.

Maybe he’s been wrong all along about John.

-

John stays up so late that he’s preparing to crash on the couch, ready to claim to Chas in the morning that it’s because he had to finish preparing a spell.

It’s bullshit, of course. The only thing keeping him up so late is his refusal to sleep in his empty bed. For an eighth night in a row.

See, the couch is easier, because the size of it is for one person. There’s nowhere for him to roll over without falling off. 

He tried to sleep upstairs when Chas was gone, pretending that his bed is just empty because Chas is in New York, and not because of the things they aren’t to each other.

He’s felt like this since they’ve returned to the mill house. It was worse when Chas was in Brooklyn, the physical distance gaping between them. Then Chas swanned in, quiet the way he usually is after these trips, and John resigned himself to another night of hardly sleeping. 

John has never wanted Chas in his bed the way he does now. They’ve spent years on the road, sharing the same bed even when they don’t fuck, and the arbitrary nature of it hitting a boiling point now pisses him off.

There’s uncertainty in the air, if such a thing were palpable, and it’s all because John can’t do what he should and let go.

The kindest thing he’s ever done for anyone is disappear. He’s done enough damage to Chas, so much that leaving might make him feel guiltier. For John to do what he’s done and vanish might be in character, but he doesn’t want it to be.

The lumps of the couch dig in to his shoulder blades and John grimaces. He’ll have to concede to his aching body over his loneliness tonight. 

He sighs as he sits upright and considers wrestling with the french press. Chas hasn’t come downstairs since the shower went off and John needs the mask of caffeine to disguise how shittily he’s sleeping.

He makes two large mugs of coffee, leaving one undoctored by creamer and sugar. John pauses as he starts to return the creamer to the fridge, and instead fixes up the other cup as well. Chas might come downstairs, and if he doesn’t, John can snipe at him in the morning for not drinking the coffee he made while Chas rolls his eyes.

John is never going to be a barista, or even make as good a cup as Chas does but he knows the way Chas takes it at home.

He sips his coffee slowly, willing himself to think about the spells he should work on or the artifacts in need of tracking. It all flies away as soon as Chas walks in to the kitchen, boxers low on his hips, brown hair a mess and still wet from the shower.

John would blow him right now if he thought Chas would let him.

Instead, he slides the coffee mug across the table. It’s too late to be drinking it.

Chas looks like he hasn’t been sleeping either. 

It could be Renee, and by proxy, John’s fault since her quibbles with Chas are usually because of John. As much as Chas deserves that normalcy and time with Geraldine, John always worries Chas will come home to announce that this time he and Renee patched things up. 

Whatever the cause of fatigue is, Chas gulps down the coffee like it’s the real morning and not one am.

John’s not sure Renee would take him back if she knew that he and John have fucked. Chas’ continued association with John is already approaching unforgivable. 

The smallest, meanest part of John hopes that Renee is aware of what he and Chas get up to in motel beds.

“You look terrible,” John says, uneasy with silence that could mean something. Worried he’ll say something worse.

“Would’ve slept better if you’d been with me.”

Chas says it so calmly that John has an imaginative flash of Chas practicing that line to the mirror.

He can’t fathom what he’d have done while Chas and Renee and Geraldine spent time together as a family. Waiting for Chas in the motel room could only have so much appeal when he knows what Chas is doing.

“That’s a terrible line,” John says instead of voicing any of those thoughts.

One that might be working, but Chas doesn’t need to know that. There’s a thrill to Chas’ casual admission of domesticity. No one has ever really wanted John for that. 

“Yeah, well,” Chas grouses. “I’m a little out of practice.” 

Chas turns his hand over, palm up, and John could pretend he doesn’t notice what Chas is offering.

“I can’t believe you showered without me,” John says, twining their hands. Chas rolls his eyes and tugs John to his feet.

John doesn’t sleep perfectly that night.

Chas asleep in his bed is worth waking to.

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from 'the bottom line' by alanis morissette. im not sorry for referencing a law of chemistry in the opening paragraph; my degree has to be good for *something*
> 
> i did proofread this but i also normally let things sit for months, and that was not the case here. sometimes you just post things without a months long waiting period
> 
> anyway i love domesticness + people not having their shit together at the same time which is very chastantine i think
> 
> you can find me on tumblr at the same url!


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